


The Space Between

by stereolightning (phalaenopsis)



Series: The Marauders Fics [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drama, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-03
Updated: 2014-07-03
Packaged: 2018-02-07 06:03:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1887663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phalaenopsis/pseuds/stereolightning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sirius doesn't know how to apologise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Space Between

It's the first time James has ever been angry with him. James can be a bratty little shit, yes, sometimes, but he's almost never angry. Why fume when you can just hex somebody and get it out of your system? But James is angry with Sirius, his thin face full of a fury that is exotic and alien to Sirius, because it's not like Black-family-angry, not vicious and frosty and calculated for maximum devastation of your opponent. No, James is sloppy-angry, in a way that pours off of him in waves, blunt and un-subtle. He's got a half-healed slash through his eyebrow where the whomping willow swiped him last night, and a burn mark on his hand where Severus goddamn Snape apparently hexed him when he saw James coming down the passage alone.

James is sitting on his made bed, the scarlet curtains open, pretending to care about his Charms homework. Sirius is lying face-down on his mattress, not exactly sulking, but drifting through unpleasant feelings that have not yet crystallized into any particular call to action. But he sort of suspects an apology is in order.

Sirius has never apologised for anything, ever, in his entire life, but he’ll give one to James, because James is the best friend he has ever had and if this ends them, if the friendship is over, then Sirius might seriously, actually, definitely go insane.

"'M sorry," he croaks, mouth barely lifted off his pillow. 

"Don't apologise to me," comes the reply, tossed like cigarette ash into the space between them.

"What?"

James snaps his textbook closed. "You could have ruined his life, you know that? He could have been dragged off to Azkaban because of you."

The room is silent except for some muffled bangs and shrieks coming from the direction of the girls' dormitories. 

"He wouldn't have. Killed him, I mean," Sirius says softly.

Hazel eyes meet his and then blink, once, like punctuation, like a semicolon. "Yes. He would have done. What part of 'hunts down any human prey without discrimination' do you not understand?"

"But he's not—he's—he's Moony, though."

Moony, who is easily the nicest person Sirius knows.

Sirius doesn't know how else to explain it. The thoughts that went through his head when he said what he said to Snape now seem impossibly thin, stupid, and improbable. What he wanted—what he thought would happen, and he realizes now how utterly stupid it is—but what he wanted was for transformed-Remus to scare the living shit out of Snape, hopefully with the result that Snape would never bother any of them again. 

But that's not what would have happened, and he didn't see it until James suggested it. Snape would have died, more than likely, and Moony, sweet Moony who is a better person than any of them, would be dragged off to a chilly cell on a rocky island far out to sea, where all his joy and gentle sarcasm would be snuffed out like skinny birthday candles in a sudden gust of wind.

How strange is it that James must point this out to him, James who is usually so comically tactless. What’s happening to James, anyway? Why doesn’t he just agree with Sirius about everything, like always? Since when do they disagree about anything? They like the same flavours of every-flavour beans, for god’s sake—treacle tart and ginger and bacon, and Peter always takes whatever is left (and pawns off the earwax and booger ones on first-years who don’t know any better).

James is still staring at Sirius.

"Okay," Sirius says. "I’ll do it. When he gets out of hospital. I’ll do it then."

...

Two days go by, and Remus comes back from the hospital wing like always, and Sirius has not done it yet. James keeps finding reasons to hang around with Peter, to leave Sirius alone with Remus, but Sirius keeps catching glimpses of an alternate universe in which Remus is in Azkaban, or just alone and wandering through brown, barren countryside for some reason, and he’s pretty sure Remus sees them, too, floating in the silent space between them like dust motes, realities that could have been. Remus is the antithesis of drama queen, but he is wounded, and Sirius can tell by the length of the pauses in their conversations, by the way his wood-coloured eyes go vacant once in a while, apropos of nothing. That makes it worse. That compounds the interest on the debt Sirius owes him. But still, Sirius does not make an apology, or even an overture to an apology.

On a Saturday, when Sirius is skulking around the courtyard, hankering for a cigarette or some kind of potion that makes you feel less like a guilty idiot, he watches a shouting match between Snape and Lily Evans, which escalates into them both yelling "What the fuck is wrong with you!?" at exactly the same time, with exactly the same Northern accent. She walks on ahead of him and he runs after her, and Sirius hears him say something to the effect of, "Thought we were supposed to be friends." He doesn’t hear the rest of the conversation, but he watches them walk further away together, sniping at one another, and how they are or were ever friends Sirius cannot fathom. But then again, Sirius once thought cousin Bellatrix was a fun babysitter, the way she would cruelly and with stunning accuracy do horrible impressions of everyone in the family. It’s a suffocatingly small world, the wizarding world. You’re stuck with the same small pool of people pretty much forever. Sometimes it forces you to compromise.

An hour later, Lily comes back from wherever she just was and smacks Sirius on the face.

"Ow!" He massages the spot where she hit him. "What was that for?"

"You know why," she says. 

He sees in her white-hot face and righteous expression that she does know. How she found out, Sirius has no idea. Or maybe she doesn’t know the whole thing—maybe all she knows is that he’s the one who told Snape to tap the knot. He can’t risk giving away all their secrets with an ill-considered reply, though, so he holds his tongue.

James materializes next to Sirius and says, "Nice left hook!"

She gives them both that harpy-death-stare and walks away.

James pretends he doesn’t care, then refocuses his attention on Sirius. "Talk to Moony yet?"

"No."

The sun is going down, and the shadows of columns are stretching into long stripes over the cobblestones. James is still disappointed in him. Everything is terrible.

...

That night, in the common room, Remus and Lily are picking at a crossword puzzle in the  _ Daily Prophet _ . He’s the only one of the fifth year Gryffindor boys that she can tolerate for more than five seconds. Remus and Lily have some set of things in common, some Venn diagram with a middle section that probably contains things like "being a prefect" and "knowing about Muggle stuff like cars and toasters." Conversely, the Venn diagram of Lily and Sirius contains exactly one thing: "being quite good-looking." 

Sirius rubs the bruise on his face like a melodramatic child and says, "Go away, Evans."

She laughs, half with indignation, half with genuine amusement that he’s arsing this up so badly. "Oh, I don’t think so," she says.

Fine, okay, that was not a very suave or articulate way of getting Remus on his own.

"Um, go away,  _ please _ , Evans," Sirius says, and he already knows this is making it worse, because her (stupid) green (stupid) eyes are full of laughter.

Remus rescues him. Which is horribly ironic, because Remus should not be rescuing Sirius from Sirius’ own attempt at an apology. Why,  _ why _ does everything only get worse when Sirius tries to fix things? 

Remus gets up from his chair. "I've been summoned," he says, with a small smile at Lily, as if to imply that he's been summoned for something fun, for mischief that he can't tell her about.

"I need you to see something," says Sirius. Then, to Lily, he says, "Piccadilly."

"What?"

"Ten letter word, with a p and a double l."

"S'not," she says. "Peccadillo."

"Suit yourself," he says, and shrugs, and knows he's right. She'll find out in a minute when she tries to figure out number thirteen, which is obviously going to be "incantatem." 

Crosswords are easy. Real words, words that matter and aren't meant to be funny—these are more slippery. 

"C'mon, need to show you something," Sirius says.

He goes for the portrait hole, pushes it open. 

Remus follows him, a step behind. "Where are we going?"

"Doesn't matter. Empty classroom. Anywhere."

"What do you—"

"Just help me look, all right?"

"All right."

He does. The Fat Lady swings shut behind them, muttering something Sirius does not catch, and knocking back a tumbler of painted whisky. 

They find a good spot a minute later, a quiet room without so much as a ghost. Sirius shuts the door behind them, locks it with one swift flutter of his wand.

Silence, and open space.

"Right then," Sirius says.

Remus crosses his arms over his chest, defensive, but unwilling to verbalize it. He looks at the floor, then at Sirius. He needs a haircut; his normally neat brown fringe has reached his eyelashes, and curls up slightly at the ends. He's plain, honestly, and he's got a dusting of acne scars along his jaw. For some reason, all these things are endearing. Sirius is accustomed to beautiful people of immeasurable cruelty. Remus is not that. He is still angry, but so quietly, as if he's taken all his anger and directed it inward instead of outward where it belongs. At some level, Remus thinks he deserves to be treated this way, and Sirius hates that, and wishes Remus would smack him like Lily did, or punch him, but he never will. He’s not the punching kind.

Sirius can't take it anymore. He points his wand at himself, fires off a spell of great complexity, and crumples to all fours. He hears Remus' yell of shock. 

Then he isn't himself anymore, he is fur and smells and a symphony of sound waves. Suddenly, everything is easier: love, and the urge to be forgiven—so much simpler when you can express it by the angle of your tail and the elevation of your ears. 

"Oh. My. God."

Sirius trots over on four furry feet. Sits. A good dog would sit.

"Does that—does that hurt you?"

Sirius shakes his head. 

Remus leans against a desk for support. 

Sirius lets out a little doggy whine. Wags his tail. Changes back.

"Right," Sirius says, and stands up again. "So. Just—just keep that in mind. You know."

Remus cocks an eyebrow. "You brought me here to show off your new trick?"

"Nah, come on, it's obvious, isn't it?"

"Maybe to you."

"Werewolves only bother with people at full moon. So."

"What?"

"I’ll come with you, every month. I’ll sit with you, run around with you, play fetch all night in the Shrieking Shack. Whatever you like."

Remus frowns. "You want to—but how did you do this?"

"You leave for at least a night every month, Moony. If not a night and a day after. That’s a lot of time to practise."

"You practised, alone, when I’ve been—"

"Nah. It's not just me. James and Pete have learnt it as well. Well, Pete's nearly got it, anyway. It's fiddly work. There's a lot of math, you know, and there's this bit about parabolas that we had to translate from the original Aramaic, and it turns out you can give yourself very bad eczema if you do it wrong, and why are you looking at me like that?"

Remus looks about to laugh. "I always wanted a dog."

"I know. Me too. We weren't allowed to have pets. Mother says they're lesser beings and they don't serve any material purpose."

"That's horrible."

"I know."

"I had a cat. When I was very small. It got scared and ran away because of all the. Well. Screaming."

"I won’t run away."

This is the closest he has ever come to a declaration of love. He's never said "I love you" to a woman—he doesn't have to. There is a tense moment; neither of them moves, because Remus does not quite believe that anyone would want to be touched by a werewolf and Sirius does not come from affectionate people, so neither of them knows how to initiate this. Somehow, though, both of them move, maybe at the same time, maybe not—Sirius can’t tell—but a second later he has got Remus in an embrace that feels like it might mean something, full of simultaneous tension and relief.

"What does James turn into?" Remus says.

"Stag. Big one. Antlers."

"Fits."

"I know."

Sirius chokes out a few watery breaths, looking away, with his head over Remus’ shoulder so that he can’t see. That image of Remus, alone and chilly and halfway to soullessness, swims to the surface of Sirius’ imagination again. 

"’M sorry. Didn’t—didn’t think it through."

And because Moony is good and gracious and careful with other people's hearts in ways Sirius will never be, Moony says, quietly, "Okay."


End file.
